resting on our laurels

HARDLY!!!

We've been in our home now for a few weeks and have all settled in beautifully!!!  We've been super busy with all the unpacking, shopping, organsing quotes, shopping, landscaping, shopping ;-) ....you get the drift!

Here's my youngest with his tool belt on feeling all important!

And here he is helping his Poppy put together a kitchen in the flat!

And did I mentioned we've been busy? Mainly thanks to a lot of landscaping that poor ol' 'B' is pretty much doing solo.  He's doing a cracking job though and it's going to look fabulous when it's all finished.  Though I definitely need to shout out a big thank you to 'B's' brother 'S' who was a huge help for a couple of days and 'B's' mate 'M' who is giving him a hand today!!

This is a before shot.  Swampy much?

And from another angle.  The weather was against us in the first week.

Here's 'B' carrying one of the many beams that will be part of our retaining walls.  He makes it look light!

And here he is with the kanga hammer digging holes for the posts to go into.  Each hole is 900mm deep and majority of them were through slate!  'B' now has muscles on top of his muscles!  If you've ever lifted one of these machines you'll know what I'm on about.

And in enters Russell and his excavator!!  Saving us, oh let's see, 1000 hours of manual labour!

Here he is out the front excavating our drive-way

Here's dedication for ya!  Once 'B' got everything out of the hole, he'd scoop the last out by hand to make a flat surface for the post.

You can see the excavated back yard here...

 

And wasn't it a relief to get a drive-way put in!  We had rain for the first week and it became so muddy.  Not great when you have a very independent 2 year old who was most put out when not allowed to walk through it when getting in the car!

We received 3 quotes for the drive-way:  $6200, $5300 & $4600.  Pays to shop around!

Its just plain concrete at the moment to match the existing section of battle-axe drive-way.  Once all the landscaping is finished, we'll clean it with a gurney and then paint it.

Yay for Dave the concretor!

Before you think it just looks like a whole lotta concrete, once the fences go up and we put our decking on the porch and landscape at the side of it (where the huge mound of dirt currently resides), it should look much nicer.  We also needed it to be reasonably big so we have the option of turning around when coming out of the garage.

On a final note, we had a few things to be finished off by Eden Brae after handover and I was naturally a little wary, wondering if we'd become yesterday's news once the house was officially ours and never hear from them again.  However true to his word, our Site Supervisor has continued to get some of the last few bits and pieces finished off for us since we've moved in, which has been terrific!!

If you're after a terrific concreter, call Dave from Ferral Concreting on 0415 221 001.

If you need an excellent excavator / bobcat operator, call Russell on 0418 220 372. 

So close yet still so far

At the beginning of the week, when we thought we may have a final walk through yesterday, I changed my work days around so I would be free to do so.  As Friday rolled around it was becoming rather obvious (to us, not so much the SS) that nothing would be happening but it meant 'B' and I had a rare day when we both had the day off and the kids were at pre-school!

Our SS never made it to the house on Thursday (as he said he would) to check everything was completed nor did he make it out yesterday (as he said he would).  As far as he's concerned he *thinks* the house is finished & ready to handover however if he'd actually gone out on site to keep an eye on things he would have noticed there is still a fair bit to do!

'B' and I naturally dropped by the house and were stoked to find a way in!  We weren't expecting that!  So we took our time and checked everything over - without feeling rushed and now that there is nothing left to go in and in decent natural light!

Here it is all nice & clean.  The floors need another mop but I'll do that when I move in anyway.

Our original list of things left to do still stands - except 4 out of the 5 touch catches in the kitchen have now been fixed (they missed one)...

1. Clean brickwork (grubby where it's been repointed & a few of the sills have mortar chunks on them)
2. Fill in some of the gaps between cladding & brickwork at the front
3. WIP & WIR shelving
4. Shower door in our ensuite opening wrong way
5. Fix the tiling in our ensuite and where the towel rail has been removed in main bathroom
6. Install a shower head in bathroom
7. Privacy lock in bathroom
8. Silicone in bathrooms
9. Touch catches in kitchen
10. Garage step
11. Manhole cover
12. Light & fan in our bedroom isn't working
13. Roof service (cracked tiles)
14. Door service (they make sure the bi-fold tracks are cleaned and fix any scratches etc)
15. Fix dented window frame

In addition to this list, we picked up some extra things yesterday:

Paint splatters all over timber flooring

The scotia was removed when the oven was installed and never put back

The carpet in our bedroom still looks rubbish and needs to be pulled tighter

And now that we've finally been able to see the carpet in decent natural light, we've noticed the join in the carpet that looks terrible!

There's big gaps in some of the grout around the bath tub and none of the excess grout has been cleaned off tiles or floor (can see it better now that it's been "cleaned")

I don't even know how we never noticed this little gem of tile work before.  Can you see how it slopes up at the end?!  It's on top of our bath hob.

Our kitchen splashback still has excess grout all over the tiles and there is paint all over the metal ends

And ummm are the windows meant to do this and completely lift out?!  Not all do it but a few do.

Had everything been actually completed and cleaned before our PCI, we would have picked up most of these additional issues at PCI.  Lesson learned.

So, aside from feeling like a picky whinger the house on the whole is looking great and oh so ready to move into.  It's getting frustrating knowing how close we are yet how many trades still need to be coordinated to finish it off to a satisfactory level.

We're also getting tired fast of feeling like a nuisance each time we try & get in contact with our SS!   

I haven't even pointed out some of the additional paint touch ups that need to be done as we're just going to do it ourselves later.

Hopefully, we'll have some kind of result next week!

Despondent...

It took only 11 weeks to have our house 98% completed yet in the last 2 weeks only a wardrobe & pantry fit out has happened.

I know we're incredibly lucky compared to some where most of their build has been like the past 2 weeks for us but it also feels really cruel to bring us so close to the end and then nothing.

'B' called our SS this afternoon - no surprises there that we had to make the call - and miracle of all miracles he answered the phone and a conversation was had.  As far as he was concerned our clean up, carpet and shower screens have all taken place this week. Ummmm, no.  He's heading out on Monday to have a look.

Any the hoo, in the spirit of not being tooooo down about it all - perhaps we can look forward to some weekend action?

I hope everyone elses builds are speeding along :)

Party pooper

Our SS has been strangely AWOL this past week.  Perhaps it's because not much has been done in the house recently?  Either way, we've been trying to get in contact with him for the past week or more to see what's happening because by his own word, we are possibly doing a walk through very soon.  And I know it must sound strange but we have work & kids to organise if we're going to need a free day!

Annoyingly, our emails aren't being responded to and if we do manage to catch him on the phone he says he's busy and will call back.  He doesn't of course and to be honest he's always been pretty bad at responding to calls and emails but because everything has charged along at such a fast pace we didn't overly mind.  Anyway, I managed to catch him yesterday and I got a grilling for being in the house over the long weekend.

Hmmmph!

All along he's known we've popped in to have a look around.  He even joked around with 'B' about it a couple of weeks back.  I know we're not technically meant to go there and yes we are in the wrong however we have only ever gone when no one else was around as we didn't want to get in the way or be annoying to the tradies.  On Sunday, we took our 2 good friends there for a quick look around because they're moving to QLD at the end of the month and wouldn't get to see it otherwise.

And wouldn't you know it, the cleaner came at that exact same time to suss out if the house would be ready for cleaning on Monday (and funnily enough confirmed it wasn't ready).  No problems or anything but then he ratted us out to the SS.

Oh well, pointless post really but you think they'd be more concerned about us popping in when the house actually was a building site, compared to now when it's not.

Reckons he'll call us towards the end of this week to make a plan for next week.  Hmmm, we'll see....

Have you had any party pooper moments lately?

I love you Eden Brae! Yes I do.

'B' met up with our SS this morning and things are shaping up even better than we hoped!  Our SS seems to think that we'll be ready for our walk through in 4 weeks time with the possibility of moving in, in 6 weeks time!!!!

If it goes as planned - that's 8 weeks early!!!!!!!!  8 WEEKS! Seriously INCREDIBLE!

The painters are booked in for this Friday however he was going to see if they could start tomorrow as the house is ready for them.  Heard some not so great stories about dodgy paint jobs, so fingers crossed.

Now that tiling has completed, our bath and shower screens etc have been ordered.  Electrical's & plumbing will come in after the painting.  Roller door also goes in after the painting.  Floors will be done last.

Our doors have all been hung now too so we're technically at lock up.

And what's a post without a billion pics?

Here you can see our front door as well as the French Door's which is the main entry into the unit.

Here's the French Doors in the playroom

Looking down the hall to the front door

Laundry door

Internal door to unit

Dad's lounge room

Our ensuite's skylight

Our ensuite shower

Left of the main bathroom

Right of main bathroom

Cavity slider has been fitted to our WIP - looks so puny next to the crazy-large fridge space

So there you go.  Good on you SS and good on you Eden Brae - you're officially awesome!